The Good Ol' Days are Gone

I'd like to begin with a side note about children's books. There are some good ones, some not so good ones, and some that are questionable at best. Anyone who has ever been to the library with small children knows you don't do any reading there. I spend the majority of my time making sure Henry isn't in the plants, behind the fishtank, running out the door, or any other thing that would give me an eyebrow raising from the librarian.

In this pressure situation, my tactic is to look first for books with cars or trucks, knowing this is a subject near and dear to Henry's heart. Otherwise, I settle for any other theme (new baby, closest holiday, pets, etc.) and any combination of these popular themes is a bonus. Second, I open it up and glance through to see how many words there are per page (we need to maximize the short attention span). Most of Henry's reading time is before bed, which means that George is then subjected to the new batch of books. Apparently tonight's Christmas theme choices were odd, at best. One story tonight entitled "The Christmas Train", involved a little girl warning a train on the tracks about a rock fall ahead. She does this, of course, by dragging her Christmas tree, ornaments and all, out of her house, down the track, 400 yards, through the tunnel, to light it on fire.

The other book tonight was about the "New Baby Blues". I'm still trying to expose Henry to books about siblings, in the hopes that transitions become easier. Grant's new crawling and pulling up on everything skills have Henry a little freaked out about the sudden forced sharing of every toy he owns.  I'm also a little freaked at how physical Henry gets when Grant gets dangerously close to said toys, and tables get turned over onto his head in anger, frustration, or general big brother maliciousness.  This book's message is a little bit of a tough love approach and the last line of the book is "The Good Ol' Days are Gone".

Sounds about right.